This document describes SaVeS, the Standalone Version System. It is an overview of the philosophy and basic usage. For detailed information on system usage and command descriptions, please see the svs manpage.

SaVeS is a single user VCS (Version Control System) tool, that offers most of the functionality of CVS, with less of the hassle. The interface consists of two command line tools:

svs

svs is the main interface command. Use svs help to get help with its functionality. Or use the svs manpage.

saves

saves is a shortcut command for when you want to make sure everything is backed up, but you don't have the time to think about what to do. If the current directory has never been back up, do a svs import, otherwise do a svs save.

Some of the key features of SaVeS are:

Simple

svs tries to do the right thing with a minimum of input.

Self contained

All revision information is stored in a .saves directory under the current directory. See "The .saves Repository" below for more information.

Clean

No CVS directories sitting in every directory. Yes, there is a .saves directory, but it's only at the root, and since it begins with a period, you don't see it as much.

Interoperable

You can export the historical information inside a SaVeS repository to another VCS.

Portable

Since SaVeS is self-contained, you can archive whatever directory you are working on, and move everything to another machine.

All revision information for a given directory tree is stored a .saves directory at the root of that tree. This directory is known as a SaVeS repository. All SaVeS commands must be issued from the directory containing the repository.

A repository is responsible for the entire tree below it. However, if any directory below the root, contains a .saves directory itself, then that directory is not processed by the commands issued above it.

The SaVeS system is written in Perl. It is a wrapper around the standard Unix toolset RCS (Revision Control System). It is distributed as a Perl module called VCS::SaVeS on the CPAN (Comprehesive Perl Archive Network). It installs the Perl scripts svs and <saves> as command line programs. It also installs some Perl modules, but you probably won't use those directly.